When You Forget Your ‘Why’

I’ve hit a few bumps along the way, both good and bad but I not gonna lie and say that I forgot about the blog, because I did. My bad.

So much has happened this year, both good and bad.

I started my Master’s program in Counseling and Guidance in January 2019, working full time, and I also moved apartments around April this year. Sooo, to put things simply, I’ve been just a smidge busy.

I’ve also had my down moments. I’ve noticed my mental health rapidly declining over the months, which is scary to experience. You think that you’ll never up at a point where things feel hopeless. You think “Ah, I handle everything”. That a big fat NOPE from me.

With school and work, I had the mentality that I can handle it all and have my sh*t together. I didn’t realize how bad I would bury the things that bother me deep inside my mind. It was unhealthy for me to do that. I’m still trying to overcome this.

Getting into grad school, I was a bit prepared that it was going to take a lot of work, time, and effort by also balancing work and a barely visible social life. But I didn’t realize how much effort (mental and emotional effort) I would have to put into this program. I’m on my second semester into the program and I’ve never been more mentally and emotionally drained. I think all the time if this is what I should do. If this is what I’m meant to accomplish and be in life. I doubt myself constantly and feel pretty stupid compared to my other classmates. I do this to myself all the time and it’s tiring.

Through all of this, I began to lose myself. I’ve began to forget who I am and the things that i love doing. I literally forgot WHY I loved blogging in the first place. I see blogging as a way to connect with others, make new friendships, to literally not feel like I’m alone in this world. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this so this is what I chose to blog because I don’t want others to feel like they’re going through something alone. So, yeah, I kind of drifted a little bit in my blog but I need to remind myself as to why I decided to do this blog: I want to reach others, be my own boss, actually have some control in my life. We grow through some rocky patches and hey sometimes it’s rough.

Don’t you ever feel like no matter how much you study, or prep for something, or just even try, it still doesn’t seem like you’re making a dent in anything? Recently (quite a while), I’ve been feeling just out of place, always on edge…it’s tiring.

I feel like I’m on some dirt road somewhere taking a detour of life; a very uncomfortable detour. I feel like I’m just going with the flow of everything nowadays. I feel like I don’t have control of anything and it’s draining.

I am writing this…I am putting myself out there…I am being vulnerable to let people know that I get how you feel. It sucks that no matter how amazing life is, whether it be having that job you always wanted, your independence and freedom, your social life is killing it, you have an amazing family and beautiful relationships…it all doesn’t matter when your mental health is struggling. It. Is. Okay.

I am not saying that I am 100% better cause I’m far from that. I feel like I’ve finally become aware of what I need to work on and find something that brings me joy, which got me thinking about my blog. When I was consistent with my uploads, it felt like the few people that I got to reach, I was able to impact in some way and that hopefully, I made someone smile. Blogging is still something that I would love to make my full-time job one day. But I’m tired of feeling sad and not being able to have control over the things in my life. I need my sense of control back and this is how I’m going to do it.

To those who feel like they don’t know what they’re purpose is, what their “why” is, I’m on the same boat. It’s okay, it’s normal to feel like you should know why you do what you do but i can guarantee you that everybody else feels the same way, no matter how confident they sound or how they present themselves. Life throws us some shi**y things that we feel like they’re impossible to overcome. One thing that I learned is to take it one step at a time. Be in the moment and forget about the future cause the future is gonna happen regardless of how we feel so might as well be in the now and trust that things will work out.

But on the bright side, I’ve learned a lot of things this year too and hopefully, you all can relate to some:

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

This was something that stood out to me beginning my graduate program. Change is such an uncomfortable process. Imagine if the change was comfortable, everybody would do it. It explains why people choose to be complacent with their lives because they don’t like the feeling that change brings, even if the change will benefit them because change is hard. I’d welcome change as a new phase in life. Like a new chapter for better things.

You’re not a burden.

I’ve always felt like I just bother people when literally I’m just breathing. I’m just existing. I catastrophize and irrationalize everything like it’s my job. I make stuff up in my mind that aren’t true but yet we convince yourself that these things that we construe in our minds are true.

We are our biggest bully and that is 100% fact. It’s so easy to beat ourselves down. It’s like you can complement every person you encounter one day but why is it so hard to be able to do the same thing to ourselves. We need to be kinder to ourselves because there’s only one of you and you wouldn’t want to be wasting your life putting yourself down.

The right people will bring out the best in you and you will realize that you’re not a burden, there are people that enjoy your company and appreciate you just sitting there, literally breathing and existing.

Even when things are out of control, there is still some…control.

It’s crazy to think that this is true but yes, it is. We have control over how we react to our situations. Our state of mind may skew our sense of control so we may think “Whaaaat? You’re crazy. This is out of my hands”.

But we actually do, we just don’t realize that we have control. It takes being mindful to know what things we can control.

Breathe.

Like literally, breathe. Sometimes we get overwhelmed by everything that’s going on that we don’t take at least 5 minutes to center ourselves. Life gets hectic at times and we NEED to have our “me” time to get away from all the chaos.

Personally, what I do is that I try to find the positives or something that made me smile that day and I will write it down in my journal. This is just something that helps me be more mindful about what I should really be focusing on instead of focusing on the negative.